Back to the grungy drug addled Glasgow of her early books, but this time with sex workers and finding and making family. I love the way Mina’s characters make families for themselves, and I love the care she takes here in portraying sex workers as fully fledged people. I did not love the bits of having to see through the killer’s eyes—that misogyny was hard to be dunked into, even though it was the point. It’s a brutal world, like most Mina, but, as is also true with most Mina, the characters make their own escapes and communities.
You can count on Denise Mina to surprise you. This time, the surprise is that I really didn't like her protagonist. Usually I love these damaged, mouthy, wonderful women, but Margo Dunlop is just ... fairly ordinary. Her dramas are domestic: she's just learned she's pregnant, she's left the nice bloke she was living with because she's not sure he's parental material, and her best friend has terrible taste in men. Her adoptive mother has recently died and she has to clear out a house full of stuff, but can't quite bring herself to get it done. Relatable? Maybe, but not likeable in the way Mina's outspoken, bristly, leap-off-the-page heroines usually are. returnreturnYou know that trope in which an ordinary woman is thrust into an extraordinary situation, is being stalked by someone evil, and the suspense is killing you? Well in this case, Margo is feeling completely out of her …
You can count on Denise Mina to surprise you. This time, the surprise is that I really didn't like her protagonist. Usually I love these damaged, mouthy, wonderful women, but Margo Dunlop is just ... fairly ordinary. Her dramas are domestic: she's just learned she's pregnant, she's left the nice bloke she was living with because she's not sure he's parental material, and her best friend has terrible taste in men. Her adoptive mother has recently died and she has to clear out a house full of stuff, but can't quite bring herself to get it done. Relatable? Maybe, but not likeable in the way Mina's outspoken, bristly, leap-off-the-page heroines usually are. returnreturnYou know that trope in which an ordinary woman is thrust into an extraordinary situation, is being stalked by someone evil, and the suspense is killing you? Well in this case, Margo is feeling completely out of her depth, but not so much because she's learned her birth mother was murdered, or that someone is sending her nasty, horrible letters, but because she's just met her aunt and been introduced to the world she and her mother lived in - a world of being marginalized and shamed while just trying to survive poverty and neglect as sex workers. (Less dead when murdered than other "normal" people, hence the title.) These are the women who come to life, whose anger and realism make this story work. returnreturnAt first I was a bit disappointed, thinking this was a relatively standard story, complete with short chapters from the "mind of the killer" with a heroine I didn't much like, but as the women who steal the show spoke up I began to see what she was actually up to. It reminded me of Stieg Larsson's original title for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Men Who Hate Women, and in a similar way it's the women - not Margo, but the women she meets - who take all the tired crime fiction tropes, turn them inside out, and have the last word.
